Dennis-Yarmouth faces school budget battle

The complex logistics that have consumed officials planning next week's mammoth Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District meeting are nearly resolved.

HILARY RUSS

The complex logistics that have consumed officials planning next week's mammoth Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District meeting are nearly resolved.

The meeting, which could draw thousands of people, will be Monday on the football field at the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School on Station Avenue. It starts at 7 p.m., but officials are urging registered voters from both towns to arrive early and take shuttle buses from other schools and nearby churches.

At stake are deep budget cuts at Yarmouth town offices or the school district.

If school officials receive their full request for $48.7 million, the town of Yarmouth has said it will likely slash staff and services. But if voters turn down the budget, the school district could see stiff teacher and program reductions. And if Monday night ends without voters and the district school committee reaching some agreement, the schools face temporary takeover by the state Department of Education.

Logistical details are mostly settled, and the school district's attorney and the meeting moderator are finalizing procedural questions. But one issue isn't hard to miss: ill-will from funding changes made two years ago and, for some officials, memories of a divisive district meeting in 1993.

E. Suzanne McAuliffe, chairwoman of the Yarmouth Board of Selectmen, was on the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School Committee's side of the equation in 1993, and she remembers a negative backlash that lasted for years after the district meeting.

"Even though we felt we were doing the right thing, it cost the school committee dearly," she said. "We had at least three to five years of very, very difficult relationships with the town."

Because of the negative repercussions from the first district meeting, school committee members decided not to call for another district meeting in 1996, even though they were seeking an extra $1.6 million, McAuliffe said.

Tempers eventually cooled, but they flared up again two years ago, this time because of a switch in the funding formula used to calculate how much each town pays into the total budget.

Call it the Chapter 70 clash.

Yarmouth voted to switch from a regional agreement, which the two towns had used for years, to Chapter 70, the state's default funding formula. Yarmouth officials said they had been paying too much all along. Dennis representatives felt forced into accepting the switch, calling it a loophole and saying the move was unfair to them.

After 19 months of negotiations, selectmen in both towns unanimously agreed to use the Chapter 70 formula in 2006.

Yet as emotions have risen with the district meeting planned for Monday, some are still feeling friction from the Chapter 70 clash. Officials from both towns and the schools have pointed fingers at each other in increasingly antagonistic letters in local newspapers. In interviews for this story, most officials remained cordial but admitted the current impasse was tense and emotional.

"It's been a wonderful relationship for a number of years," Dennis Town Administrator Robert Canevazzi said of his town's connections with its neighbor across the Bass River. "But since discussion occurred a few years ago about switching to Chapter 70, it seems to have started an uneasy relationship."

Previous conversations about seceding from the school district, or trying to recruit other towns to join in to shift the balance of power and finances, could be resurrected, Canevazzi said. "That discussion is again starting to gain some traction here in Dennis," he said.

Sheryl McMahon, chairwoman of the Dennis Board of Selectmen, said school officials aren't asking for any extras, and have cut 39 positions already.

Dennis residents did their job by voting for an override in their town this year and many wrongly believe they don't need to come out and vote Monday, she said.

"And now for Yarmouth not to meet the level of commitment that Dennis feels is important is very disheartening and disappointing," she said. "I campaigned on the premise that we were going to provide full-day kindergarten. I find it unconscionable that we could lose that program."

Yarmouth town administrators have been feverishly planning for their own potential budget crunch. They could have to slash $1.5 million if voters at Monday's district meeting choose to fund the school's full request for $48.7 million budget.

Dennis and school officials noted that Yarmouth selectmen could call for a municipal override if they need extra money after Monday's vote. But McAuliffe said voters had already turned down municipal overrides in recent years. She couldn't rule out an override request, but she said there were no current plans to call for one should the town be faced with cuts.

Yarmouth Town Administrator Robert Lawton said he has to plan the budget with what he knows, and extra money from a possible override simply isn't on the plate.

If Yarmouth does have to reduce services, officials say money could be cut from each department. The town could cut staff, salaries or services in libraries, natural resources, recreation, public works and building inspection departments, among others. And the town could lose five police officers and the police K9 unit, and see the conversion of the new West Yarmouth fire station to part-time status for nine months or more, if officials have to cut 6 percent of their budgets.

And that's just for starters, Yarmouth officials said.

School administrators said they've already taken a hit this year.

"I respect the other town departments, and I understand they're in the same position I am," schools Supt. Carol Woodbury said. "They're trying to protect their people. But 39 of my people already lost their jobs."

To trim the school district's budget, the district school committee has increased many fees for school services, including sports, day care, adult education and parking, and the school committee has drawn from emergency reserve funds.

Statewide, schools are coping with rising special education and transportation costs. For Woodbury, the two worst cuts she might have to make if the full budget is not passed Monday are cutting full-day kindergarten to half-day and closing Laurence C. MacArthur Elementary School in South Yarmouth.

"There is nothing that I personally or professionally want to see happen to our other town departments," she said. "But I also feel that I am the advocate for children here. I have worked very hard to do my share to make sure that nobody else is lost. But now I'm at a point where I have to tell people that the quality of their children's education will be affected by further cuts."